Past
Grantees

Directors authorized support of $6,000 to the MIDTOWN GREENWAY COALITION, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of the Twisted Steel Project. The Midtown Greenway is a linear park and bicycle highway running through the heart of South Minneapolis along the 29th Street railroad corridor. The Greenway links a chain of lakes with the Mississippi River. The Coalition is a grassroots nonprofit group whose mission is to facilitate a community-based process to develop the Greenway. The Twisted Steel Project is under the direction of artist John Poole, who will create a cast iron sculpture in conjunction with the Smith Foundry, a long-time industrial neighbor of the rail corridor. The Jerome Foundation authorized subsidy for this creation of a new work by an emerging artist.

Since 1981, the Jerome Foundation has supported a fellowship program for emerging Twin Cities-based artists through the MINNEAPOLIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN, an educational institution which offers 15 professional undergraduate majors and a two-year M.F.A. program in visual studies. The fellowship program provides to artists funds to explore and produce a focused body of work over a 12-month period. The artists receive stipends of $7,000 each, exposure to three visiting critics and a culminating exhibition. These fellowships are awarded once per year through a two-stage evaluation process, drawing approximately 260 applicants. Believing that this fellowship program plays an integral role in the vitality and quality of the arts community in the Twin Cities, the Jerome Foundation was pleased to authorize a two-year grant of $130,000 to continue support for this program.

A grant of $10,000 was allocated to pARTs Photographic Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, to add high-end, computer-based electronic imaging equipment to its service and exhibition program. This equipment and software expansion will be put at the direct service of independent photographers to produce and advance their own work, and will also assist the organization in promoting photographers and its exhibition and critical writing programs.

The Jerome Foundation approved three membership grants to the COUNCIL ON FOUNDATIONS, the MINNESOTA COUNCIL ON FOUNDATIONS and INDEPENDENT SECTOR. In addition, the Foundation set aside funds to continue work on the Jerome Hill Archive, which is likely to be transferred to a public library/archive within the next year in order to make those materials more accessible to researchers.

The MINNESOTA FILM BOARD, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $5,000 in support of a Resource Center serving filmmakers. The Film Board intends to make Minnesota one of the top five markets in the United States for quality motion picture and television production. To support its Blockbuster/McKnight Film Fund, as well as other services for filmmakers, the Film Board and its collaborative partner, Independent Feature/North, have developed a workshop series, technical assistance consultations and a Resource Center. In recognition of the Boards services for emerging filmmakers, Jerome Foundation authorized a grant toward the specific costs of the Resource Center.

JANE MINTON, Executive Director of Independent Feature Project/North, received a grant to travel to Dublin, Galway and Donegal, Ireland to meet with media arts organizations and Irish filmmakers. She will study grant programs in Ireland and seek out short films for a curatorial program at IFP/North.

A two-year commitment of $32,000 was authorized for the MIXED BLOOD THEATER COMPANY, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of the development of emerging playwrights through productions. This theater is a multi-racial company dedicated to encouraging cultural pluralism, individual equality and artistic excellence. The theater provides professional experiences for actors of color, produces educational programs on racial and cultural themes, and employs colorblind casting. It mounts a mainstage season each year, a mix of original scripts, contemporary classics, regional and national premieres and adaptations. There is an annual playwriting contest and a season-long play submission review which provide to Mixed Blood over 400 scripts per year to consider for production. Jerome Foundation funding will be used toward emerging playwrights commissions and for the costs associated with the competition and script review process.

MOMENTA ART, Brooklyn, New York, received $7,500 in support of the participation of emerging visual artists in the 1997-98 exhibition program. Located in Williamsburg, Momenta is dedicated to increasing the publics awareness of emerging and under-represented artists through exhibitions. This is an artist-run organization concentrating on two-person shows, which allow emerging artists to show a substantial body of work. Artists chosen must be unaffiliated with commercial galleries and must have a consistent body of thought provoking work.

The Directors authorized a two-year grant of $12,000 to MOVEMENT RESEARCH, New York City, in support of contributing writers fees for the publication The Performance Journal. Initiated in 1990, the Journal addresses the need of dancers and choreographers to illuminate the terms on which they make work. The Journal provides a context for dance and performance work; and is intended to provide a lively and engaging debate about the place of dance and performance in contemporary culture. This publication addresses the Jerome Foundations interest in arts criticism, and in supporting a vibrant dialogue about the place of the arts in American society. The Performance Journal places emphasis on reaching younger, emerging choreographers, artists of color whose work is marginalized, artists working outside of New York City, and choreographers working across disciplines.

A two-year commitment of $30,000 was authorized for THEATER MU, Minneapolis, in support of the development and production of new works. Theater Mu is a professional Asian-American company committed to giving voice to Asian-Americans through the transformational power of theatrical works. The organization produces two or three mainstage productions each season, and a New Play Festival. It offers community outreach performances and workshops, and an ongoing training program for Asian-American actors, playwrights and directors. New works by Maria Cheng, Sandra Agustin, Jeffrey Bailey, Santwana Dasgupta, Veena Deo, Ranee Ramsawamy and Mithu Schwartz will be featured.

SUSAN MUSKA AND GRTA LAFSDTTIR received funding toward a 60 to 90-minute documentary titled The Brandon Teena Story, based on the Humboldt triple murder and how and why it took place, destroying the lives of at least five young people forever, and significantly affecting friends, family and lovers left behind. The themes of homophobia and self-hatred are embedded in this story.

NAUTILUS MUSIC-THEATER, St. Paul, Minnesota, received a grant of $25,000 in support of the Composer-Librettist Studio and Rough Cuts. It is the mission of Nautilus to explore the dynamics of individual and communal integrity through the creation, development and production of new operas and other forms of music-theater. The Composer-Librettist Studio is a professional development program which focuses on the process of collaboration between composers and writers through exploratory assignments that deal with the challenges of writing for the music-theater form. Rough Cuts is a monthly series of works-in-progress, dialogues between artists and audiences, and investigations into the creative process.

Appalachian folk dancer TERESA NEBY received a grant to travel through Western North Carolina, Virginia and Eastern Tennessee. Under the guidance of folklorist Phil Jamison, she will study Appalachian traditions and dance.

NEW DRAMATISTS, New York City, received $7,500 in support of the Composer-Librettist Studio. New Dramatists was founded in 1949 to provide a safe haven in which playwrights could develop their skills and learn more about the theater. Its mission is to find gifted playwrights and give them the time, the space and the tools to develop their craft, so that they may fulfill their potential and make lasting contributions to the theater. For the past 11 years, New Dramatists has facilitated a Composer-Librettist Studio under the direction of Ben Krywosz of Nautilus Music-Theatre, St. Paul, Minnesota. Studio writers and composers explore the basic elements of music-theater in a collaborative atmosphere. The Studio has introduced more than 100 playwrights and composers to one another. The subsequent collaborations of these playwrights and composers have fueled the growth of music-theater in the country.

NEW RADIO & PERFORMING ARTS, New York City, was founded in 1981 to stimulate and advance the publics awareness of innovative and experimental work in radio. The program Turbulence commissions emerging and established creators to develop new works which explore the specific characteristics of the World Wide Web and make use of multimedia and on-line technologies. Turbulence commissions artists from a variety of disciplines as well as cultural and aesthetic backgrounds. It is particularly sensitive to the needs of groups that do not as yet have a significant presence in multimedia undertakings, such as women and artists of color. The four artists to be commissioned with Jerome subsidy of $14,500 are Diane Bertolo, Jen Meacher, Nick Didkovsky and Brenda Nielson.

NEW RIVERS PRESS, Minneapolis, received a grant of $16,000 in support of the Minnesota Voices Project, first funded by the Jerome Foundation in 1980. New Rivers has a particular commitment to emerging writers and the publication of their first books. The editor works closely with competitively selected Project winners to review their manuscripts, edit the texts, design and produce the books, and promote them. The annual competition draws a large number of manuscript submissions, read by five judges who select three winners in prose and three in poetry.

DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP, New York City, a leading contemporary arts organization devoted to connecting artists with audiences, works to identify and encourage talented and culturally diverse artists and companies; to stimulate and develop a broader audience for these artists and their works; and to create opportunities for artists to participate in an interactive community laboratory for the working imagination and its essential, practical application to the world that surrounds us. The First Light Commissioning Program provides funds to emerging choreographers and performance artists to make new work for presentation at DTW. The Jerome Foundation made a two-year commitment of $70,000 to the program. In addition, the Foundation made a commitment of $75,000 in support of artists services and general operating expenses during the three years of a proposed capital campaign. This is a highly unusual commitment for the Foundation.

DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP, New York City, a leading contemporary arts organization devoted to connecting artists with audiences, works to identify and encourage talented and culturally diverse artists and companies; to stimulate and develop a broader audience for these artists and their works; and to create opportunities for artists to participate in an interactive community laboratory for the working imagination and its essential, practical application to the world that surrounds us. The First Light Commissioning Program provides funds to emerging choreographers and performance artists to make new work for presentation at DTW. The Jerome Foundation made a two-year commitment of $70,000 to the program. In addition, the Foundation made a commitment of $75,000 in support of artists services and general operating expenses during the three years of a proposed capital campaign. This is a highly unusual commitment for the Foundation.

The NEW YORK MILLS ARTS RETREAT AND REGIONAL CULTURAL CENTER, New York Mills, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $32,000 in support of an Emerging Artist Residency program. The Center presents arts and cultural programs which provoke dialogue about the relationship between rural and urban worlds. In using art, the aesthetic experience and the power of human creativity, the Center brings people closer to each other, and by extension, to themselves. Jerome subsidy for the Emerging Artist Residency program allows five to six artists per year to spend two to four weeks each as residents of New York Mills, provided with living quarters as well as access to studios for work. The artists are expected to work on their art and provide some community and educational service, an interaction described as generative and purposeful, for a minimum of eight hours a week .

NEW YORK THEATRE WORKSHOP, New York City, received a two-year grant of $30,000 in support of the 1997-98 and 1998-99 Play Development Program. New York Theatre Workshop, founded in 1979, produces challenging new theater and develops the work of a diverse group of writers. The Play Development Program serves established and emerging playwrights in a variety of formats. There is a Monday reading series of new plays, a festival of staged works-in-progress, a summer residency program for the development of new works, playwright fellowships for artists of color, and services to an extended community of theater artists known as the Usual Suspects. The Play Development Program is designed to nurture each individual playwright and supply the necessary resources for plays to grow at any stage of their development. Jerome subsidy supports the participation of emerging playwrights.